Battlin' on the Corner: Techniques for Sustaining Play

Abstract

Drawing from close to four years of ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and video recordings, this paper analyzes how inner-city men sustain playful street corner rap "battles" in South Central Los Angeles. Although participants know that the battle is supposed to be a playful way of resolving perceived disrespect in group rap "ciphers," some become "more than play." Indeed, ritual insults have the power to provoke feelings of rage, which can propel individuals into violence. To sustain the playful meanings of battles, participants who offend their opponent use different nonverbal cues to signal, "I was just playing," while the offended party responds with cues signaling, "I do not have any hard feelings." When these moves do not work, onlookers step in between participants, tell jokes, and use other gestures to defuse escalating tensions. The techniques outlined in this article elaborate Erving Goffman's (1974) theories of "keys" and "limits," showing how embodied and emotional cues are used to sustain the shared presumption that "this is play."